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Variant 28 Spring 2007
the Oil issue
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Front cover
Texan Oilfield, USA, 1922.
Image courtesy of the Houston Public Library photo archive
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For an ongoing resource and updated content, go to:
www.overabarrel.info
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Over a Barrel
Editorial
Moving through the United States, the Middle East and the Niger Delta, this issue of Variant takes us from the southern tip of Latin America all the way to the Western coast of Norway. Devoted to oil, the writers take a multi-layered internationalist approach to the questions surrounding the commodity which Juan Pablo Alfonzo, a former Venezuelan oil minister, called the "devil's excrement." There are also many anti-war activists and environmentalists who will pinpoint oil as the root of all evil. What was compelling to us in preparing this issue was how the crisis of faith in the oil economy brings us to interconnected issues of hi-finance, the expansion of debt, enfeebled democracy and the chances for progressive social change.
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Cold Death by Neoliberalism
John Foster
In his political economy of fuel poverty in Scotland, John Foster reveals the impact of privatisation, monopoly tendencies, and speculation in the UK's energy sector. Despite North Sea oil, energy is more expensive in the UK than elsewhere in Europe. In 2006, when UK pensioners faced a 30% rise in their energy bills, the companies operating in the North Sea yielded a 42.9% return on capital. Energy policy is being hindered by reliance on transnational companies which, under speculative pressures, have increasingly short-term goals to maximize profits. Just when reform
of the energy sector is urgently required, big business is working against any real progress towards developing sustainable and renewable energy and appears to be set on a course of inaction.
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Living on oil under democracy
Owen Logan
In our minds, at least, oil is often linked to power more than energy. However, Owen Logan writes that it's not so much that oil and democracy don't mix, but more that the oil economy shows the dubious nature of modern democracy. Drawing on interviews done for the 'Oil Lives' oral history project based at the University of Aberdeen, his journey from Texas to Venezuela and Argentina is a travelogue from the Bush dynasty's heartland to the politics of Latin American anti-imperialism. He examines the 'solidarity economy', speaks to trade union leaders dissatisfied with conventional trade unionism and meets oil workers whose Piquetero campaigning was defined early on by their stand on environmental protection. He considers the broader implications of these developments.
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Many Sellers. One buyer.
Jake Molloy & Ronnie McDonald
In this article from OILC, the offshore workers trade union, the writers say that it is disconcerting when the man working alongside you is paid a wage only a third of what you regard as the absolute minimum acceptable. In providing the background of Filipino recruitment to the North Sea industry, this article exposes the way the Philippine economy was broken apart by national debt bringing about an exodus of labour which serves the interests of the state and employers at the expense of workers' abilities to negotiate their wages and conditions of employment. A system of
monopsony, which binds Filipino workers, is aided and abetted by partnership agreements with British trade unions. Rather than truly representing these workers big UK unions appear to be managing industrial relations for the employers.
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Accompanying drawing by David Shrigley: www.davidshrigley.com
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The Fictitious Commodity
Andy Cumbers
Comparing different experiences of the North Sea oil industry, from the perspectives of so called 'deviant' trade unionists in the UK and Norway, Andy Cumbers considers the diminishing returns of larger bureaucratized trade unions who, like the employers, regard labour as a commodity. Focusing on individual cases, this article highlights the Norwegian cases where divers were betrayed by trade unions which colluded with false safety standards. Yet discussions at the SAFE union in Stavanger, that are
reported here, suggest that Scandinavia's history of militancy, and a more honest trade unionism, is not yet over. Organisations like SAFE, and their sister union OILC in the UK, are rightly proud of their achievements, but their greatest challenges lie ahead in integrating immediate needs of their members with the broader issues facing society.
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"To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing"
Phil England
Taking an upbeat approach, England considers the contrasting arguments put forward by George Monbiot in his book ‘HEAT: How to Stop the Planet Burning’ and James Lovelock’s, ‘The Revenge of Gaia’. Countering Lovelock's defeatism with what England sees as Monbiot's political pragmatism towards the transitional demands of consumerism, England sets out Monbiot's plan to reduce the UK's carbon emissions and ultimately save the planet.
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coinet.org.uk/climateradio
www.turnuptheheat.org
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The Ecological Question: Can Capitalism Prevail?
Daniel Buck
Daniel Buck's article refutes a millenarian tendency on the Left which combines a vision of ecological catastrophe with the catastrophe for capitalism itself. Buck looks instead at the uneven development of capitalism and its capacity for 'creative destruction'. Buck's cool-headed Marxist appraisal shows the double-sided characteristics of public relations phenomena like 'greenwash.' Rather than sheer spin, greenwash reflects a real desire for structural flexibility within the capitalism,
albeit one which is likely to usher in another historic round of dispossession.
Reprinted from the Socialist Register 2007, ‘Coming to Terms with Nature’.
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Illustrations by Paul Bommer:
www.paulbommer.com
www.socialistregister.com
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The Next Gulf
Simon Pirani
The infamous 'Atlantic Triangle', active in the 17th and 18th centuries, and built around the slave trade, is duplicated today by a more complex network based on oil and gas, corrupt flight capital, and circuits of high finance. This has left the people of Nigeria in penury, while the impact of the oil industry has reduced the Niger Delta to a chaotic 'death economy.' The imperial solution is international militarization,
hence the title of this 2006 book by authors from the Platform organization - 'The Next Gulf: London, Washington and Oil Conflict in Nigeria'. Simon Pirani reflects on his own experience of the Niger Delta and advocates a critical response which needs a robust analytical framework if it is to lead beyond the politics of liberal protest. In the
aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, the powers that be are surely immunized against this kind of dissent and if anything they are softening up public opinion for further aggressive warfare.
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www.platformlondon.org
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"Anyone can go to Baghdad; real men go toTehran"
Muhammed Idress Ahmed
Applying Antonio Gramsci's theory of civil society, Muhammed Idrees Ahmed's article criticizes the strategies and arguments of the anti-war movement, particularly in the United States. He points to the failure of the anti-war movement to confront the Israel lobby and the underlying geo-politics of regional control in the Middle East. Sadly, this meant that many people confused the structures of imperial hegemony with agency within it. Anti-war discourse focused on oil reserves as the main reason for invading Iraq disregarding the evidence supporting a more nuanced critical understanding of the reasoning for war - one that would take into account the institutional strength of Zionism in the United States as well as crisis in oil markets. The title of Robert Fisk's 2006 article in the Independent newspaper, 'United States of Israel?', poses the same question that Scott Ritter put before the US congress, when he asked ... "[w]ho is driving US policy towards Iran?" The existence of such powerful, yet unaccountable, lobbying groups in the US is not confined to its Middle Eastern strategies of course. But in pursuing Iran, while ignoring Israel's contraventions of international law, the hypocrisy of US foreign policy may yet prove to be the undoing of US power.
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http://fanonite.wordpress.com
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The Friendly Atom
NuclearSpin
Illustrated with Corneila Hesse-Honegger's studies of deformed insect life found in the vicinity of power plants, this article looks at the public relations machine which would have us believe that nuclear power is the answer to crisis in energy markets and the threat of global warming. Official devotion to the nuclear option is difficult to comprehend when balanced against the evidence presented here, which suggests that not only is it an extremely costly and dangerous option but, even in the short term, nuclear power is in fact less practical than a coherent environmental policy which would include adequate resources for the research and development of renewable energy. Such fiscal support has instead been channeled to the nuclear industry through the lobbying of powerful vested interests who apparently find public opinion an inconvenient management problem. Indeed as one of the members of Supporters of Nuclear Energy said to the House of Lords, "the public should not be expected to have an opinion."
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www.spinwatch.org
www.nuclearspin.org
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The Inverted Coalmine
Terry Brotherstone
The late Bob Ballantyne was a survivor of the Piper Alpha disaster in which 167 oil workers were killed when the platform was consumed by fire. Caused by corporate negligence, this industrial accident in some ways changed the face of North Sea labour politics. However, oil revenues cushioned de-industrialisation in the UK and this article explores the social and cultural context of a composite photograph, 'The inverted Coalmine', made for the Scottish Parliament by Owen Logan in collaboration
with Bob Ballantyne. Terry Brotherstone is director of the 'oil lives' oral history project at the University of Aberdeen and Bob Ballantyne was one of the first people who recorded their life story in that project.
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